The Orphan Master's Son

by Adam Johnson

They drove alongside the Revolutionary Martyrs’ Cemetery. The Songun guard with their golden rifles had gone home for the day and in the long shadows cast by the bronze headstones moved occasional men and women. In the growing dark, these ghostly figures, keeping low and moving quickly, were gathering all the flowers from the graves. “Always they are stealing flowers,” Sun Moon remarked as they passed by. “It sickens me. My great-uncle is in there, you know. Do you know what that says to our ancestors, how it must insult them?” Ga asked her, “Why do you think they steal the flowers?” “Yes, that’s the question, isn’t it? Who would do that? What’s happening to our country?” He stole a brief glance, to confirm her disbelief. Had she never been hungry enough to eat a flower? Did she not know that you could eat daisies, daylilies, pansies, and marigolds? That hungry enough, a person could consume the bright faces of violas, even the stems of dandelions and the bitter hips of roses?